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John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, XX.
Army road
and bridge Builders. (search)
ld such bridges are called by the French pontoniers. In fact, the system of ponton bridges in use during the Rebellion was copied, I believe, almost exactly from the French model. The first ponton bridge which I recall in history was built by Xerxes, nearly twenty-four hundred years ago, across the Hellespont. It was over four thousand feet long. A violent storm broke it up, whereupon the Persian got square by throwing two pairs of shackles into the sea and ordering his men to give it threther to serve as a kind of floor or solid bottom; all which they covered over with earth, and added rails or battlements on each side that the horses and cattle might not be frightened at seeing the sea in their passage. Compare this bridge of Xerxes with that hereinafter described, and note the points of similarity. One of the earliest pontons used in the Rebellion was made of India-rubber. It was a sort of sack, shaped not unlike a torpedo, which had to be inflated before use. When thu